IT’S a side effect common to many mothers after giving birth and it seems no amount of exercise or dieting can banish the “mummy tummy”.

After having children, Judy Semple, was left feeling self-conscious about the extra flesh on her abdomen that was impossible to shift.

But now the mother-of-four has regained her firm, flat stomach after becoming the first woman to undergo Bodytite in Scotland.

Unlike a conventional tummy-tuck, an invasive operation under general anaesthetic that requires several days in hospital and leaves a long abdominal scar, Bodytite is carried out under local anaesthetic with minimal scarring.

Judy, 39, from Glasgow, was out of hospital within a couple of hours, power-walking the next day and back running a week later.

Using radio frequencies, Bodytite heats beneath the skin to just above body temperature and melts away excess body fat. Crucially, it also shrinks collagen fibres, so your skin naturally tightens.

Attractive, slim and athletic, Judy, who is an anaesthetist, doesn’t fit the stereotype of women who opt for cosmetic surgery.

She had no major body hang-ups and stresses she was not a “shallow airhead with no confidence until she had surgery”.

“I didn’t want unattractive loose belly flab that didn’t fit into my jeans, but I accepted it was part of having kids,” she says looking at her children, Michael, 12, Marie Therese, eight, Seamus, six, and Francesca, two.

“When you’re younger, your skin is different and things snap back.

“But being a bit older, drinking too much wine and carrying too much weight, I thought my shape had changed for good.”

Judy had never had cosmetic surgery before and says: “I wouldn’t have anything cosmetic done with a general anaesthetic, not because it worries me, I’m an anaesthetist after all. I just wouldn’t do it.”

But as a member of an all-woman cosmetic surgery team, Judy opted to become the first patient in Scotland when a colleague, the renowned plastic surgeon Margaret Strick, took delivery of the Bodytite device at Carrick Glen Hospital in Ayr.

The average woman puts on around two-and-a-half stone during pregnancy, so it’s no wonder stomach muscles are left looser than they were.

During pregnancy the abdominals have to stretch enormously.

And, as women age, it becomes harder for their bodies to regain shape.

“On the one hand you love your children and motherhood gives you a great deal of joy,” explains Margaret.

“But there is also a sense of loss and I’ve seen people get very emotional about their mummy tummy.

“Losing your figure can be devastating for a woman and being able to do something to change or correct that makes them feel positive.”

Already popular in America and Canada, Bodytite is also useful for people who have excess skin after weight loss. For men it can banish love handles and man-boobs and women can also target hips and saggy arms – those impossible-to shift bingo wings.

But for people with dramatic excess skin, for instance anyone who has undergone gastric banding and lost stones of weight, a tummy tuck remains the best option, although Bodytite can be used at the same time to tighten the skin.

Margaret says: “Judy was lovely and slim so we didn’t need to remove lots of fat tissue.

“The main effect was tightening her skin and it’s been a drastic improvement.”

Unlike a major tummy tuck that involves an incision from hip to hip and removes a swathe of skin and fat, Bodytite uses two tiny incision points, one in the belly button and another near the bikini line.

A liposuction probe is then inserted under the skin and communicates with the radio frequency device above the area being done. Judy was numb for a few hours afterwards and wore a compression garment for a week.

But now, four months after her operation, she has the toned stomach most women dream about and certainly not the one you’d expect after four natural births.

Cost is clearly a consideration, and at £1000 an ‘area’, of which your lower abdomen is two, it may be cheaper and more effective than joining a gym in the quest for that perfect body shape.

The risks involved are less than a tummy tuck and increasingly this type of cosmetic work is undertaken by professional women who are managing their image.

But Judy baulks at the suggestion husband Michael had any input, or even an opinion, on the choice she made alone.

“I’m not about to start wearing mid-riff tops but it’s great not having a saggy tummy that you have to roll into your jeans,” she says.